Dark Detectives

by Stephen Jones

  Lorre shrugged again. “It is most likely. Unless both have been kidnapped by another party.”

  “You’ve left someone at Flynn’s house? In case he comes back.”

  Lorre nodded. “Of course. Mr. Walsh took charge, and made sensible arrangements. He is a man of action.”

  Lorre gave me a hundred dollars as a retainer. It came in whiskey-circled five-and ten-spots, with a few crumpled singles, probably from a bar-room whip-round. I imagined Walsh not having small enough bills on him to contribute.

  We shook hands on it. I had a client. I had a case. I had a headache.

  *

  “Hold, sirrah!”

  A long-legged figure, cloaked in darkness (and a cloak), stood tall in Errol Flynn’s hallway, an accusing foil pointed at my breast pocket. He had shoulder-length hair and a Buffalo Bill beard. His eyes were watery with a whiskey-ish tinge. I recognised John Carradine.

  “I’m the detective,” I said. “Peter Lorre sent me.”

  He stepped back, and saluted, slapping his long nose with the edge of his foil.

  “Enter freely, friend. Thou most worthy servant of the higher law.”

  Flynn lived in a big house up on Mulholland Drive. I’d heard the stories and expected boudoir decor, complete with velvet curtains and pictures of fat little naked people on fat little naked cushions. In fact, the place was in disappointingly good taste.

  He even had books. Not sawn-off spines glued together to make a novelty door for a hidden cocktail bar. Not privately published, gorgeously illustrated pornography. Proper books, by fellows such as Shakespeare, Scott, Stevenson and Conrad.

  On its side in the hallway was a comfortable armchair. I imagined it stood up, with a dead actor sprawled in it. Not a lovely image.

  Carradine bobbed around like a scarecrow on strings as I inspected the scene of the crime. Like Lorre, he knew how to cast himself. In his life, he was a courtier. Others might be Hamlet or Claudius, but he was down for Horatio or Osric. He knew when to put in a “fie on it” or a “message, sire!” and could swish his sword with the best of them. At this precise moment, he was getting in my way more than was advisable.

  There were two possibilities. Flynn had taken the body and run off, either in a fit of insanity or as a joke to get back at Walsh. Or someone had intervened and snatched the both of them.

  Actually, there was a third possibility. Three months ago, I’d have ruled it out altogether. But on a derelict gambling ship out in the Bay my opinion of the world had taken a tumble. Barrymore could have got up, and taken Flynn with him to the world of the dead.

  To Flynn, Barrymore might be Jacob Marley. His fate was a hideously plausible prediction of the destination at the end of the road the younger man was taking. Was Flynn even now being shown the drunken ruination he could expect if he didn’t reform?

  No. That sort of thing didn’t happen.

  In books and movies, the supernatural has a point. The ghosts teach Scrooge a lesson. My experience was that nothing could be learned from the inexplicable. Like in the cartoons, pianos sometimes fell from the sky and squashed random people into pancakes.

  There was no point in trying to make sense of this. If Barrymore were dragging a dead leg around the Hollywood hills like Tom Tyler in The Mummy’s Hand, was that any more insane than the idea of propping up a dead matinee idol in a movie star’s hallway just for laughs?

  I looked around, for clues. The door-lock was smashed in, showing raw wood where the mechanism had been wrenched away. That didn’t square with what Lorre told me.

  “When they planted the body, how did they get in?”

  Carradine hung his head to one side in a posture classically intended to display thought to the gallery.

  “French windows at the back,” he said.

  Lorre told me Flynn came home and, with drunken difficulty, unlocked his front door. But Lorre hadn’t been there. He was imagining the plan as Walsh intended it. Had Flynn been so drunk that he decided not to bother with keys and smashed down his own front door?

  It depended on what kind of drunk he was. If he were so soused he couldn’t use a key, he would most likely be incapable of the physical task of kicking in a door—not an easy thing off the screen, even if you are Captain Blood and Robin Hood in one. In any case, it was more probable that Flynn would go round the back and get in easily through the French windows (as demonstrated by Walsh’s body-snatching party) or take the easy option of sleeping it off in the garden.

  I examined the lock. It had been professionally broken. A hefty shoulder had been applied. And a telltale black gouge suggested the involvement of a crowbar.

  So someone else had broken in after Walsh. Someone better at smashing down doors but not as familiar with the property.

  I reconstructed the crime, crossing the Flynn threshold and imagining myself as the wobbly movie star.

  Dropped off in his driveway, he weaves his way up to his front door and finds it broken in. Lorre, in his reconstruction, imagined Flynn coming face to face with the dead Barrymore. That was possible. But he must be alerted by the broken lock to the fact that something is wrong. That percolates through even the most drunken brain. He steps warily into the hallway, imagining himself the hero of his movie, too drunk to be as cautious and cowardly as anyone who didn’t think he was Errol Flynn would be.

  Standing in his doorway, in a sort of vestibule between the door and the hall, I thought it through. There was a table by the door. In a bowl on the table were a bunch of keys, a money-clip well-filled with bills and a five-hundred dollar watch. Flynn goes through the ritual of divesting himself of these items after stepping into his house, all the while trying fuzzily to think about the broken door. Is there danger inside?

  I stepped out of the vestibule and reached out. I touched the light-switch he must have flicked. I turned the lights off and then on again.

  Flynn’s eyes would be dazzled.

  And he sees?

  Barrymore, certainly. Maybe Walsh’s joke goes as planned, and Flynn is terror-struck by the apparition. A puffy-faced, bloodless corpse.

  But someone else—most likely, several someones—is there too, about their own business. Probably ill-doing of some sort. This place stank of it.

  “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” I opined.

  “You can say that again, buddy,” Carradine nodded sagely.

  *

  As I drove to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary, I thought about the case. The most likely and comforting solution, ridiculous as it sounds, was that Walsh chose to play his prank by coincidence on the night some entirely unconnected thieves decided to break into the Flynn mansion. The thieves get a surprise when they find Barrymore and are themselves surprised by a returning Flynn, and flee the scene, kidnapping the living and the dead.

  It didn’t play in Peoria. No matter how spooked they were by the body-snatching business, I couldn’t imagine thieves who specialise in homes of the rich and famous but leave behind several thousand dollars of untraceable notes and an expensive watch. Not the sort of oversight you expect of the larcenous professional.

  That meant the two breakins at the Flynn place were connected. The second was a consequence of the first. The unknown persons were after Barrymore’s body.

  I wondered about the more fanatical fans. All the women who supposedly committed suicide when God took Valentino away. With a queasy stomach turnover, I remembered whispers about corrupt morgue attendants who took back-handers to let ghoulish busybodies peer and pry and poke at celebrity corpses. There were stories about Jean Harlow you don’t want to hear.

  This was California, central clearing house for cults. Mostly harmless kook groups, but there were others—I had shivery memories of the Esoteric Order of Dagon in Bay City—who were deeply dangerous.

  Did some crazed John Barrymore worshipper out there have enough tana leaves to bring him back for one last private performance?

  It was a fine spring night. With the windows of the Chry
sler rolled down, I could smell orange blossom and gasoline on the Los Angeles breeze. There was a war on, of course. But there were always wars on.

  *

  The Mortuary was a single-story structure with a lot of stucco, and a couple of palm trees in the sidewalk outside. They had a marquee, presumably to announce their big funerals. Barrymore, lucky to get work in Bulldog Drummond “B” pictures these last few years, was back on top again, name in big black letters. This was the last place a star wanted to get billing. Though when Carradine went, he’d be lucky to rate a mention on the “Also Dead” roster posted outside.

  There’s a guy who always plays mortuary attendants in movies. A little, skinny, bald, pockmarked character with a voice that reminds you of Karloff and eyes that light up when he thinks of a nice, cold grave. His name is Milton Parsons.

  I could swear he moonlights at Pierce Brothers. He was behind the desk, a bellhop in a mausoleum, reading a funeral directors’ trade magazine. The cover story was about a shortage of coffin materials, what with the war effort claiming most of the nation’s lumber and brass. Wasn’t that just like the government, making the undertaker’s job difficult at the same time it was supplying him with more corpses?

  I showed him my badge. It’s very impressive.

  “I’ve come about Barrymore,” I said.

  I didn’t have to ask if he were the attendant Walsh had bribed. He gulped, adam’s apple bobbing over his wing-collar. He looked sallow and guilty.

  “I was assured by Mr. Walsh …” he began.

  “That’s okay, fella. There’s a war on. Rules don’t necessarily apply.”

  He smiled, displaying a creepy slice of dentition that made his face even more skull-like. I wondered how much he’d have charged for a feel of Jean Harlow. I tried to keep my stomach down.

  “Have there been any other unusual inquiries concerning Mr. Barrymore?”

  His eyes glittered. “A great many have called to pay their respects. Several studio heads …”

  None of whom would have given him work last week.

  “… and a remarkable number of ladies.”

  Barrymore had been famously profligate in that department since the turn of the century.

  “If I might say so, it is becoming an embarrassment that the star is not, as it were, appearing on stage. An understudy will not suffice.”

  “I’m doing my best to get him back.”

  “I should hope so.”

  I imagined Barrymore laughing. Wherever he was.

  “Since Walsh took him away, have there been any other insistent inquiries?”

  “Oh, all of them.”

  “Unusually insistent. Groups of people, not single mourners. With perhaps a hefty member of the party, a chauffeur or bodyguard.”

  I was thinking of the type of muscle used to smash in doors.

  “Maybe of an occult bent. You know, creepy types?”

  He thought about it. He shuddered.

  “Yes, sir. Indeed. Groups of that description have called. Two of them.”

  I closed my mouth. “Two?”

  “Shortly after Mr. Walsh and Mr. Lorre departed, an Irish fellow demanded to be allowed to see the corpse. He offered quite a considerable emolument.”

  The attendant must have been sick to have gone with the first offer.

  “He became quite abusive when we were unable to strike an agreement. He was accompanied by two unusual individuals. I didn’t get much of a look at them, but they struck me as wrong somehow. I had the impression that they wore rather too much scent. To cover another smell, perhaps.”

  “This Irishman. I don’t suppose you got his name?”

  The attendant shook his head. He did not enjoy remembering this encounter. I had hit upon something that spooked him.

  Imagine how that made me feel.

  “Didn’t he give you some way to get in touch with him, when the corpse was returned, so you could do business?”

  The attendant froze, and clammed up. I filled it in for him.

  “You told him about Walsh. You told him who had the body. He paid you.”

  He didn’t contradict me.

  “You said Barrymore was at Errol Flynn’s house.”

  “No,” he admitted. “Is that true?”

  “Did Walsh have much of a start on the Mystery Man?”

  “An hour or so.”

  It was impossible that the Irishman had tailed Walsh. Somehow, he had homed in on Barrymore. Did the dead actor come equipped with some sort of beacon?

  My head was hurting more.

  “And the second group?” I asked. “You said two suspicious groups made inquiries.”

  “I told them nothing.”

  “So they weren’t paying. Who were they?”

  “An Englishman, a French-accented woman and an American who claimed to be a federal agent. The Englishman did most of the talking. He left his card.”

  He left that up in the air. I didn’t reach into my pocket. There was no need to put a bribe down to expenses yet.

  “Do the Pierce Brothers still own the mortuary?” I asked. “And are they aware of your sideline?”

  The attendant scowled and pulled the card out of thin air like a conjurer. He handed it over.

  I knew the name before I saw it.

  EDWIN WINTHROP. THE DIOGENES CLUB. LONDON.

  He had been around the Janey Wilde business also, along with a French woman named Geneviève Dieudonné and a fed called Finlay.

  I had the impression that Winthrop’s special field of interest was Weird Tales country.

  There was a telephone number on the back of the card.

  “Because no money was involved, you didn’t tell Winthrop about the Irishman, did you?”

  The attendant looked down at his shoes. I shook my head, almost in admiration.

  If Edwin Winthrop was surprised to hear from me, he didn’t betray it in his even, chatty tones. I mentioned that I was looking for an actor, a recently deceased one, and that his name had come up in the investigation.

  “In that case, you better pop out here for a chat. We’re holed up in Coldwater Canyon. Just a couple of houses down from Boris Karloff.”

  He laughed that off. If Bela Lugosi was involved in this, then all the screen’s bogeymen would be represented. That wasn’t my kind of movie.

  I took the address, which was on Bowmont Drive.

  “Careful how you go,” Winthrop advised me. “The turns get a bit sticky. And a lot of the signs have been taken down, to fool Japanese invaders.”

  I knew that.

  *

  I drove out to Coldwater Canyon. This was going to be an all-night case. It seemed to me that everyone involved slept only in the day, like Dracula. Except Barrymore, and he was supposed to be sleeping all the time.

  I knew next to nothing about Winthrop. He had some official position, but wasn’t keen on specifics. There were worse things waiting man than death, Hamlet had said—and John Carradine would agree with him—and that was something princes and governments had always known, and always done their best to conceal from the rabble. I knew that all governments must have people like Winthrop—or our own Special Agent Finlay—to take care of those things, discreetly and without public honour. I didn’t like to think how busy they might be.

  I couldn’t spot Karloff’s house, and it took me a while to find Winthrop’s hideout. The whole street was ordinary. It was an ordinary house. A Flippino houseboy led me out onto the patio, where a group of people sat around the swimming pool. The moon was bright, and the only artificial light came from the glowworm ends of cigars and cigarettes.

  Winthrop wore a white dinner jacket and was smoking a foot-long Cuban cigar. A black cat was nestled in his arms, blinking contentedly. Winthrop grinned to see me.

  Geneviève Dieudonné, who wore something silvery and clinging that suggested a resistance to the quiet cool of the night air, arose elegantly from a recliner and gave me a dazzling smile. She said she was pleased to see me a
gain.

  A grunt from the other man I knew, Special Agent Finlay, suggested he disagreed with his French associate. He waved a paw at me, sucked his cigarette dead, then lit another.

  There were other people around the pool. I would have thought them a party, but the only drink in sight was tea, served in mugs not the best china. This was a meeting and, from the slightly electric air, I guessed an urgent one.

  Winthrop introduced me around.

  A behemoth of a man whose weight was barely supported by a reinforced deckchair was Judge Keith Pursuivant, a jurist I had never heard of but who greeted me in oratorical Southern style. He wore a voluminous cloak and a wide hat, and might have been Carradine inflated to the size of a dirigible. Also present were a fellow called Thunstone, an academic named Leffing, a little Frenchman whose name I missed, a physician named Silence, and an American with too many Gs in his name to be credible.

  “Have you heard of the Jewel of Seven Stars?” Winthrop asked.

  “A racehorse?”

  Winthrop laughed, and chucked the cat under the chin. “No. A gemstone. One of the treasures of Ancient Egypt. An item of immense occult significance.”

  “Nom d’un nom,” cursed the Frenchman. “A psychic bombe, of incalculable magnitude.”

  “Let me guess, someone else has it, and you want it?”

  “You see through us entirely.”

  “It’s for the war effort,” Finlay said, dourly.

  “We’re throwing stones at Japan now?”

  Strangely, nobody laughed at that. Which gave me a chill. This group might have its comical aspects, but they were deadly serious about their fabulous jewel.

  “If it comes to that,” Geneviève said, “the War might be well lost.”

  “Set against us in this business are a crew of very dangerous characters,” Winthrop explained.

  “An Irishman?” I ventured.

  “You are up on this. Yes, Bennett Mountmain is the man to watch. A worse dastard than his uncle, if that’s possible.”

  Bennett Mountmain. I had a name.

  “He was kicked out of Ireland by the priests. He still claims to be the rightful king or some such rot. We know he’s been knocking about in bad places. Haiti, Transylvania, Berlin. Like that swine Crowley in the last show, he’s been working for the Huns. He’s in close with Hitler’s crackpot mages. And he’s after the jewel.